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A recent study found higher androgen and estrogen levels in postmenopausal women who smoke than in nonsmoking postmenopausal women.

Studies in the past have shown potential risk factors for breast and endometrial cancer as well as type 2 diabetes include high levels of estrogens and androgens, yet investigating the correlation between smoking and sex hormone levels has produced inconsistent results. Now, this new cross-sectional study suggests that, in postmenopausal women, sex hormones may be one such channel through which cigarette smoking influences chronic disease risk.

A three-dimensional model that allows insight into how breast tissue grows in its earliest stages has been developed at the University of Virginia, allowing scientists the ability to duplicate the early growth of human breast tissue outside the body.

On August 26, 2011, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved crizotinib (Xalkori) for the treatment of certain patients with late-stage, non–small cell lung cancers (NSCLC) who express the abnormal anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) gene.

Between 1% and 7% of patients with NSCLC have the ALK gene abnormality, which causes cancer development and growth. This form of lung cancer is usually found in nonsmokers. Crizotinib works by blocking particular proteins, including the protein produced by the abnormal ALK gene.

New accreditation standards for hospital cancer programs were announced by the Commission on Cancer (CoC) of the American College of Surgeons (ACS) on August 31, 2011, and a patient-centered approach is the focus.

“The changing landscape of cancer patient care motivated us to develop new standards to directly address patient concerns,” said Stephen Edge, MD, FACS, Chair of the Commission on Cancer.

Melanoma will be diagnosed in 68,130 Americans this year with 8700 dying of the disease, according to the American Cancer Society. Contrary to popular belief, however, it’s not how old patients are but rather the frailty of their health that can predict how well they will fare after a melanoma diagnosis. In fact, older melanoma patients with good health may have better outcomes than younger patients in poor health.

A Clinical Proteomic Tumor Analysis Consortium (CPTAC), with grants from the National Cancer Institute, has been formed between Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Johns Hopkins University, Vanderbilt University, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, and Boise State University. Such research could hasten the discovery of the molecular basis of cancer using quantitative proteomic technologies and workflows.

About 120,000 women in the United States younger than 50 years develop cancer each year. Women on chemotherapy could suffer from side effects such as acute ovarian failure, infertility, and early menopause according to researchers from the University of California San Francisco. A total of 1041 women (aged 18 to 40 years) who were treated for leukemia, Hodgkin disease, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, breast cancer, and gastrointestinal cancers responded to a retrospective survey. Read More ›

In the last decade, the question regarding whether all cells within a tumor are equal or whether some cancer cells are more powerful has been highly investigated in experimental models. Research published recently in Nature Medicine, however, centers on patients and shows that acute myeloid leukemia (AML) contains rare cells with stem cell properties, called leukemia stem cells (LSC). These LSCs better predict clinical outcome than the majority of AML cells, thus establishing for the first time that LSCs are significant in patients.